Jo Rose & Klara • Tennessee (Silver Jews) • 2013

Stef Chura - How to Rent a Room • 2019

Right before Halloween, another great indie-rock artist, Stef Chura, released her version of “How to Rent a Room,” a Silver Jews classic from 1996’s The Natural Bridge.

Mordantly funny and shabbily pretty, it’s a message from the victim of a suicide (or maybe a botched suicide), opening with the indelible line, “Now, I don’t really want to die/I only want to die in your eyes/I’m still here below the chandelier where they always used to read us our rights.” RS

Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy • "The Wild Kindness • 2021

Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy shared a cover of the Silver Jews’ song “The Wild Kindness,” which was written by the group’s late frontman David Berman. The recording features the Silver Jews bassist and Berman’s widow, Cassie Berman.

Also contributing to the track were guitarist David Pajo, Lambchop keyboardist Tony Crow and Silver Jews drummer Brian Kotzur. Several others were part of a choir of backing vocalists “swimming in a river of voices” including Pajo, Meg Baird, Bill MacKay, Cory Hanson, Cassie, David Grubbs, Matt Kinsey, Haley Fohr, Emmett Kelly, Todd Rittmann, Alasdair Roberts, Matt Sweeney, George Xylouris, Azita Youssefi, Sean O’Hagan, Ben Chasny and Elisa Ambrogio. jambase

Best of 2019 • Turner Cody • Sleeping Is The Only Love

I heard they were taming the shrew.

I heard the shrew was you.

You might as well say, "Fuck me," 'cause I'm gonna keep on; keep on loving you.

I'd crawl over 50 yards of broken glass just to make it with you.

Sleeping is the only love.

Sleeping is the only love.

I had this friend his name was Marc with a C.

His sister was like the heat coming off the back of an old TV

Their folks were slain in their red boiling springs home.

It was the worst of the Lord; some of the worst of the Lord.

Later I'd come to find life was sweeter than Jewish wine.

Give a box of candy or a foot massage - some people don't take the time.

I'd crawl over 50 yards of burning coals just to make it with you.

Sleeping is the only love.

Sleeping is the only love.

Nothing • We Are Real (Silver Jews) • 2019

Up the hill past 694, at the stone wall make a left, 

and I will see you soon my friend if these old directions still direct. 

Is the problem that we can't see or is it that the problem is beautiful to me? 

The birds of Virginia are flying within you 

and like background singers they all come in threes. 

Won't soul music change 

now that our souls have turned strange. 

Once a day, twice a day... 

And when on and off collide 

we'll set our souls aside and walk away. 

We've been raised on replicas of fake and winding roads 

and day after day up on this beautiful stage 

we've been playing tambourine for minimum wage 

but we are real, I know we are real. 

Repair is the dream of the broken thing. 

Like a message broadcast on an overpass 

all my favorite singers couldn't sing. 

My ski vest has buttons like convenience store mirrors 

and they help me see, that everything in this room right now is a part of me. 

Won't soul music change 

now that our souls have tured strange. 

Once a day, twice a day... 

And when on and off collide 

we'll set our souls aside and walk away. 

Realizing is how it feels inside when it happens to you. 

So I took a shot of sugar like snow dumped into the blood 

and children wander off into the ultra-economic 

but we are real I know we are real.

Late Homework • The Songs of David Berman • 2019

There is an idea that poetry is not the poem itself, but rather the small tidbit here and there that you are able to find, make meaningful connections with. and carry with you in your heart. This is certainly true of what it’s like exploring the absurd yet strangely dignified world of David Berman. In every piece of his writing at any point you might stumble upon the most stunning view of the miraculous beauty of decaying American life. Every line had the same opportunity to blow your mind with it’s brutal and transformative honesty, achingly encompassing a landscape of tragedy-turned-comedy and vice-versa. 

Approaching Perfection • A Tribute to DC Berman • 2019

« The idea came from my friend Baptiste Fick, who taught me two decades ago how to play How To Rent a Room on a guitar. “What if we organized a tribute compilation of David Berman?” As is customary at Section 26, I responded : “Let’s do it. We’ll think about it afterwards.” The musicians we started to contact reacted the same way, with short and direct answers. We often got a modest : “I’m in, buddy!” Sometimes, we’d receive whole testimonies of an encounter, an interaction with David Berman around Jewish mysticism, or teenage memories which obviously struck a chord with Baptiste and me. Even the most legitimate refusals were encouraging. Xavier Mazure

Documentary about the Silver Jews • 2007

A film by Michael Tully documenting two shows by the Jews in Tel Aviv and an afternoon in Jerusalem during their first ever tour. 15 years after the band's inception, this tour is treated as the amazing and improbable event that it was.

RIP David Berman • 1967-2019

There’s a trapdoor in the country where we can disappear.

These giant evergreens are a promise redeemed

Let’s walk down the glassy top of a frozen pasture stream

Our minds can dream like soda machines

“I’m not convinced I have fans. In my whole life, I’ve had maybe 10 people who have told me how much my music means to them.”

We’re gonna take a ride in the dirt, we’re gonna die til it doesn’t hurt, then they can bury us side by side. 
“Room Games & Diamond Rain”

“It’s distressing to do this, but if I’m to grow, I have to do things that I didn’t do a long time ago. I’m tired. I need to take a few risks. I can’t keep living like this.” the ringer

I asked a painter why the roads are coloured black.

He said, “Steve, it’s because people leave

and no highway will bring them back.”

‘Random Rules‘

David Berman talks about the end of Silver Jews, the rise of Purple Mountains, every song on their self-titled debut… July 12th, 2019

Darkness and cold, darkness and cold
Rolled in through the holes in the stories I told
Conditions I'm wishing weren't taking control
Darkness and cold, darkness and cold
"Darkness and Cold"

What’s with all these handsome grandsons in rock band magazines? What have they done with the fat ones, the bald and the goatee’d? 

“Strange Victory, Strange Defeat”

Ten thousand afternoons ago

All my happiness just overflowed

That was life at first and goal to go

Me and you and us and them

And all those people way back when

All our hardships were just yardsticks then, you know

You know

Not the purple hills

It's not the silver lake

It's not the snowcloud shadowed interstates

It's not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, Oregon

Where nothing's wrong and no one's asking

But the fear's so strong it leaves you gasping

No way to last out here like this for long

'Cause everywhere I go, I know

Everywhere I go, I know

"All my happiness is gone"